Question

If you walk a distance of 8 blocks and then 3 blocks south from home, what is your position compared to home? What distance did you walk?

Answer 1

The position compared to that of home is a reference to displacement, I believe.

Displacement = x total - x initial

So I believe the answer is 5 blocks due north (if you’re walking linearly from your home), unless the questions is referring to relative displacement, in which then you’d need to use the Pythagorean theorem to find the hypotenuse between both positions. And then you’d have to find theta for the degrees between the south direction and the other unmentioned direction. But I don’t think that’s the case.

Distance refers to x total and doesn’t care for direction, as this refers to a scalar quantity opposed to a vector. Thus the equation is just

d = x

So 8 blocks + 3 blocks = a distance of eleven blocks walked total